by Jacob Ross
‘I’m alright here.’ He crossed his legs and bumped a shoulder against the door frame.
Suddenly she did not know what to say. Under the bright ceiling lights of their kitchen, her son looked as she had always known him – a clean-skinned, soft-spoken young man, dressed with the tastefulness she’d taught him. He’d angled his head downwards to avoid meeting her eyes.
She replayed the resentments of the evening – the driver who’d dumped her off on a street she’d avoided as soon as she could afford to; the youths whose presence had unnerved her. It was as if it was all intended to confuse and disorient her.
The shift in Trevor’s tone pulled her thoughts back to the present.
‘That was not…’
He was watching her with a steady, sidewise slant of his eyes. The rest of him was very still. This coolness, the feeling that her son was pushing her away, raised the heat in her.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she snapped.
‘What you did was dangerous, Mam. I’m telling you.’
She took a breath and pressed her weight against the hard edge of the granite counter.
‘You mean stopping on the street to call out to my son because he had his hands around a woman’s throat?’
‘I’m just saying, it was…’
‘I heard you first time – dangerous. Why?’
He shifted his stance, his hands pushed down the pocket of his coat which he hadn’t bothered to take off.
‘Since when you come like that?’ She twisted her lips, making a show of it as her eyes travelled along his face, then down the length of him. ‘What you been hiding from me, Trevor? All this time? Because, come to think of it, I doubt this is the first time. And as for dangerous…’ She dragged her bag across the table, slipped a hand down a side pocket, took out the sheathed surgeon’s scalpel and dropped it on the counter. ‘Not for me, Sonny. No man or boy will ever lay his hands on me. Not again. I want you to understand that.’
‘Again?’ he grunted.
She let that pass.
‘This is the result of my twenty years busting my arse for you: good school, decent education…’
Trevor flicked his wrist, made a low-throated dismissive sound.
That straightened her back and froze her. ‘You telling me that don’t count for anything?’ She could not hold back the hurt in her voice.
‘Not much.’ He shrugged.
She brought her hands up to her face and kept them there until her breathing quietened.
‘Okay,’ she said reaching for her bag. She pushed past him, went into her bedroom and pulled the door behind her.
*
She tossed in and out of sweaty dreams in which faceless men with wide-rimmed hats stood on rain-soaked streets brandishing blades and calling out her name.
She got out of bed close to morning and parted her blinds. Outside, winter had returned; the grass along the edges of her driveway was frosted white, the metal rails bordering the road below glowed like molten iron in the yellow spill from the lampposts above them. Somewhere in the distance, the rattle of an early train overlaid the low snore of traffic on the North Circular.
Straight ahead, rose the three leviathan tower blocks, one of which used to be her home in Harlesden, their darkness made more pronounced by the scattered squares of light pockmarking their facades.
She closed the curtains and switched on the light. In her underwear, she stood for a while staring at the closed wing-doors of her wardrobe. She took a breath and opened it, pulling jumpers, cardigans and trouser-suits off their rails and dumping them at her feet. And when the way was clear, she drew out a narrow fulllength mirror and stood it against the doorframe of the wardrobe.
She was breathing heavily when she finished. She hadn’t done this in a long while. Not in years. She avoided showers, preferring the soapy concealment of a brimming bathtub; went nowhere with friends if it meant staying over at their place. During the couple of short holidays back home in Grenada, she stated her preference for moonlight swims. When it came to changing into scrubs, her fierceness about her privacy was known throughout the hospital.
In Grenada – where she came from as a child – they called it ‘sweet blood’. Here she’d learned the name: keloidosis – where the skin remembered everything, every angry contusion, each stinging assault against itself and in protest, threw up a dark ridgework of scars. Spoilt skin, the bitterness and shame of it. After Spooner, she’d never taken another man to bed. Skin was the part of her that Spooner loved the most, the part, when he realised that she was leaving him, he’d made sure no other man could have the pleasure of.
The only person who’d ever seen her like this was a stranger. One midsummer afternoon when she’d retired to a quiet room to change, she forgot to lock the door. She was about to slip on her uniform when it opened, and she turned to see a woman standing in the doorway with a bucket and mop in her hands. The eyes that travelled along her body were set in a face as unrevealing as a stone. Those eyes had taken her in with an understanding that froze her where she stood. It was as if in this small room, with the ticking of machinery next door, the subdued sighs and sobs of barely articulated pain in the wards beyond, she and this woman were secret sharers. The woman lowered her eyes, backed out of the door and became a cleaner once again.
The next day a small tub sat on a shallow nest of newspapers in the furthest corner of the office: a yellow paste with bits of leaves, an indecipherable medley of odours, amongst which she detected the whiff of sulphur and teatree oil. Beside it, was a strip of absorbent tissue on which was scrawled: please rub thank you.
Occasionally she saw the woman bent over something dropped or spilt in the corridor. The cleaner would never look at her. Ennis preferred it this way, that the woman and she remained within the boundaries of their uniforms.
At eight o’clock she phoned the hospital and said she wouldn’t be in. Could Doctor Ashton cover for her since she’d done the same for him a couple of weeks ago? She left a message for Mr. Wallace asking for a meeting at any time that suited him, made herself a cup of coffee and sat waiting at the kitchen table for Trevor to come down. It was quiet up there. She’d never known him to sleep past nine. At ten she climbed the stairs, knocked on his door. She heard no answer, knocked again then let herself in.
His bed had not been slept in. She puzzled for a while over the fact that she hadn’t heard him leave. At some point close to morning she thought she’d heard the rise and fall of Trevor’s voice – first the boyish bantering tone he reserved for his girlfriend, Lena, then a deeper, more throaty register. She liked Lena – a slim, fiery, brown-eyed, red-haired girl who gave as good as she got, whom Trevor had several times returned to after long silences and breaks that sometimes lasted months. She hadn’t heard from Lena in a while.
She was only aware of having fallen asleep at the kitchen table when the bell woke her with a sustained ringing that suggested the person outside knew she was in.
She stood behind the window blinds facing the driveway. There was the shuffle of something through the letterbox, then retreating footsteps. She made out the man as soon as his back appeared – David Marne, whom liaised with from time to time on the ward about some of the patients the ambulance brought in.
She rushed to the door, swung it open and called.
He swivelled around on his heels.
‘Ennis,’ he said. ‘Oh! That’s good, you’re in. I phoned the hospital.’
Inside, he slipped off his jacket and hung it on the rack behind the door.
She led him into the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’
‘Tea, if you don’t mind. No milk, no sugar.’
She quickly retrieved a cup and made the tea. ‘How’ve you been, David?’
‘The usual. You?’
‘Same old… It’s been a while.’
She placed the cup in front of him. He blew on the liquid, his eyes roving around the kitchen. ‘Nice!’
She dropped the dripping tea bag in
the bin. ‘What brings you, David? And so early?’
He looked up and frowned.
‘Ennis, I’m here because you and I go back a long way.’
‘Tell me, David.’
‘Is your boy in?’ He rested the cup on the table. ‘I’d rather…’
‘Trevor left this morning. Usual time.’
‘What’s he been like lately? I mean…’
She shrugged. ‘Can’t complain. Fine.’
‘What time did he get home last night?’
‘Why the questions, David?’
He shook his head at her.
‘I thought you’d come here as a friend,’ she said. ‘Those are police questions.’
He sucked in air and leaned back against the chair. ‘Okay, Ennis. It’s habit, sorry. There’s a woman recovering in your hospital. We took her there because it was the nearest. Swollen neck, blocked trachea from internal bleeding. Can’t breathe.’
Ennis lowered herself on the other chair. David’s eyes were fixed on some point above her head.
‘Somebody helped her off the pavement and brought her into McDonald’s, High Street, Harlesden. They left her there. Shop staff called us, asked for an ambulance. Lucky we came with one. He shifted in his seat and eased the cup away from him. ‘Without the oxygen she would have died.’
‘And what’s that got to do with…’
David made a sweeping motion with his hand across the table. ‘She won’t tell when she recovers. I’ve been doing this job long enough to know fear, Ennis. A few minutes later someone called. A woman. Same thing: bloody terrified. What kind of man puts that kind of fear in a young woman?’
Ennis shook her head and blinked at him. ‘What’s that got to…’
‘The caller gave us your son’s name: Trevor Bates. That’s all she said before she rang off. The number registered but it was one of those SIM cards you buy off the street for a fiver, then throw away. Call came in around 8.30. That’s why I asked what time he got home.’
Ennis shook her head and swallowed. Found herself speaking with the accent of her childhood. ‘Roun’ six o’clock. Trevor was upstairs.’
She was conscious of David’s steady grey eyes. He brought his hands together, steepled his fingers, then rose to his feet. ‘That’s alright, then.’
She rose after him. Saw that he hadn’t drunk the tea.
‘You’ve met my Trevor,’ she said. ‘You saw what he’s like.’
David smiled ‘That was – how long – five years ago?’
He reached for his jacket, settled the garment on his shoulders, and hung about on the threshold, looking straight out at the triple towers.
‘I’ll tell you something, Ennis. In my department we classify them. I know you folks don’t like that, but in a job like ours it helps. Over the past couple of years we’re seeing a new kind: educated – even talented – well-dressed. Charming to a fault. They know the bits of law they need to know. But, my God, the things they get up to…’
‘You’ve just described every decent young man I know. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.’
David lifted his shoulders and dropped them. He was looking at her, still smiling. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Body language tells you everything.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Got to go, Doc. By the way, I left my card. Letterbox.’
She watched him retreating down the driveway. Stood there following the white car along the narrow feeder road until it sidled onto Harrow Road and shot off.
When the cold began to seep into her bones she went inside. She phoned Lena, listened to her chirpy greeting, then left a message.
‘Gimme a call, girlchile. Been thinking lots about you. I haven’t heard from you in a while.’
She messaged Trevor. Come home. Need to see you as soon as.
She hadn’t picked up her clothes from the night before. She shoved them aside with a slippered foot, reached down the far right corner of the wardrobe and lifted out a Russell and Bromley shoebox. She brought it to the living room and laid on the table. She was still sitting with the box in front of her when Trevor arrived.
‘In here,’ she said.
The room was almost unbearably bright with the afternoon light streaming through the windows. Trevor coughed a greeting, soft-footed across the room and drew the curtains shut. She could see what girls liked about him: lean and brown as a loaf; ectomorph like his father, with a smile that promised much.
‘I have something to show you,’ she said.
‘What?’
She sensed a new cautiousness in his tone.
‘David Marne came this morning. Remember David Marne?’
His eyes were on her face, his lashes thick and lovely as a girl’s. He nodded slowly.
‘Today I lied for you. I’ve never had to lie for you before,’ she said. ‘David told me what happened to that girl – that girl you – the girl who was with you in the alleyway. She’s in hospital.’
Ennis leaned back against the chair and closed her eyes. ‘A woman phoned and gave your name.’
She pushed herself forward, drew the shoe-box towards her and opened it. From the stack of folded papers there, she retrieved one with a red ribbon tied around the middle.
‘I want you to go to Grenada. You know about the little house I built there. Your uncle Winston’s been looking after it for me. I’ll send you money every month. I’ll call Winston tonight and tell him to expect you. These…’ she pushed the paper towards him. ‘They’re deeds for the house and piece of land around it. I can book you a ticket tomorrow.’
The right side of his mouth was pulled up in a half-smile. Her son was observing her with such amusement that she felt chastised. He pulled back his head, stretched out his feet and crossed them. She wondered, as she had been doing these past two days, how a man could be so perfectly replicated in his offspring.
‘Not for me,’ he said. ‘What you want me to do over there – climb banana trees?’
Ennis dropped the document on the table and lowered her head. She sucked in hard, bit down on her lips, but could not hold it in. The sobs took hold of her.
He was silent while she fought to calm herself.
‘The girl who gave my name,’ he said. ‘Did, erm, David tell you what she sounds like?’
The question brought her to her feet. ‘What? What you just said?’ She saw him pull back, not so much with his body as with the sudden blunting of his gaze.
‘Watch yourself,’ she grated. ‘Just watch yourself.’
With an abrupt movement of his body, he pushed himself back against the chair, and for a moment it seemed to her that he was that other self – the one she hadn’t known existed. Then Trevor was on his feet – a fast fluid movement that caught her unawares.
‘Nobody got nothing on me,’ he said. ‘I’m out of here.’
Ennis woke up to the far-off sounds of sirens and looked out to see that the drizzle had eased up, replaced by a spring mist. The world outside looked smudged although the sounds were clear and sharp as glass.
She checked the time. Six forty-six. She heard the soft padding of footsteps upstairs, the dull shudder of the bed and wondered if he’d brought Lena back with him.
She toyed with the temptation to take another day off. There were two procedures she was booked for with Mr. Wallace this afternoon. Minor stuff – a child with a pebble down her ear canal, a teenager with a badly infected tonsil. Nothing he couldn’t handle without her.
The doorbell rang. She sat back at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee at her elbow and let it ring. It kept on ringing.
A swift rush of footsteps down the stairs and Trevor was standing over her.
‘Mam,’ he said, ‘I’ve been here all night.’
‘Is Lena up there with you?’
He shook his head.
‘What’s happened?’ she said.
‘Nothing, Mam. Just…’
‘Then why’re you asking me to lie for you?’
Trevor raised open palms at the ceilin
g. ‘It’s no big deal, Mam.’
The doorbell rang again. A voice loud-whispered her son’s name.
‘Hang on,’ he said.
The door opened. A rush of words followed, cut short by Trevor’s overriding voice.
Her son sprinted up the stairs. A small storm of rattling and shuffling overhead, then he was down again and out of the door.
She stared at him hurrying down the driveway with a short, quick-stepping figure beside him.
Ennis dressed for work. First, salve for her skin. After that the undershirt – still warm from the dryer – and carefully pulled on.
Sometimes she itched, the rawness always there just beneath the surface, her skin remembering. Dragging her back. Returning her always to the memory of that evening by the bus-stop on the high street in Harlesden, heavy with Spooner’s child when she told him she’d rather die than spend the rest of her life in fear of him. By then, she’d been long enough in A&E to learn something from the women they rushed in on stretchers and wheelchairs at any time of night or day. There was a kind of man out there in the world who would knock a woman senseless if he could not beat the sense out of her; who, because he could not crush her with his will, fell back on his strength. It had nothing to do with upbringing – that she was now sure of. It had nothing to do with anything that she could find words for.
There, in broad daylight, on the open high street, with a switchblade in his hand, Spooner tried to kill her. Later, when she thought about it, it was always there, even in the early days of courtship. She just couldn’t see it – Spooner’s sweetly-coated hatred which she mistook for love.
Once again in Trevor’s room, Ennis looked around. He’d stuffed his dirty clothing in the basket. Normally he brought it down and left it against the washing machine. She lifted out the canvas bag that lined the basket and rested it against the door. She opened Trevor’s wardrobe, felt along the rails where his jackets and his good shirts hung, touching their shoulders until her hand rested on a silken softness. She retrieved the coat, held it up and cast an eye down its soft grey length. The tails were damp; a greenish suggestion of moss stains along the back. She carried the bundle downstairs and dumped it in the airing cupboard, thinking, as she dropped the latch, that Trevor should have had the sense to throw away that coat.